The diverse family of layered van der Waals (vdW) materials includes metals, semiconductors, insulators, and many materials hosting exotic phases of such as superconductivity, charge density waves, and topological states. The isolation of graphene in 2005 opened up the possibility of thinning all of these materials down to individual atomic sheets. IRG 1 will measure electronic, mechanical and optical properties of atomically thin vdW materials in protected, ultra-low disorder environments, aiming to understand interactions between the vdW materials and to create new interfaces that exhibit emergent electronic phenomena.